Our Smartphones Are Poised To Predict Our Every Move

When will happen when our gadgets know where we are going before we do? It’s on the verge of becoming reality, writes Slate:

Your cellphone knows where you’ve been. And new research shows it can take a pretty good guess at where you’re going next. A team of British researchers has developed an algorithm that uses tracking data on people’s phones to predict where they’ll be in 24 hours. The average error: just 20 meters.

That’s far more accurate than past studies that have tried to predict people’s movements. Studies have shown that most people follow fairly consistent patterns over time, but traditional prediction algorithms have no way of accounting for breaks in the routine.

The researchers solved that problem by combining tracking data from individual participants’ phones with tracking data from their friends—i.e., other people in their mobile phonebooks. By looking at how an individual’s movements correlate with those of people they know, the team’s algorithm is able to guess when she might be headed, say, downtown for a show on a Sunday afternoon rather than staying uptown for lunch as usual.

Fuck smartphones, people are predictable as hell. I can guess with 90% accuracy where most of my friends will be at this exact moment.

emperorreagan

My phone is likely to predict that I am laying in a single spot in my living room and not moving at all 3-4 days per week for 12-14 hour stretches, thanks to a combination of forgetting it and leaving it at home on purpose.

Malk

lol

Nunzio X

If only our Overlords could figure out a way to know what we think, say, do, feel, desire, and where we are at all times. And who we associate with.

And if only they could figure out how to get us to cheerfully hand this info over to them…

Oh, wait. Never mind.

Infvocuernos

You what’s really scary? I read this article after the one about the damn drones. Between the drones and the phones, I wouldn’t even make an exciting target.

MoralDrift

Welcome to the nightmare!

Taan Maat

Welcome to The Machine.

Taan Maat

Welcome to The Machine.

Malk

I don’t and never have owned a smartphone, eat that.

Nephilim

Smartphones, only the entranced are buying them.

Kind of like Smartwater. Odds are it has Fluoride in it, which makes you slow and maleable, but it’s Smartwater!

Taan Maat

coupled with alphabet agency spreadsheet generators like facebook, the feedback loop they study and implement encodes us further into the Matrix every day. It doesn’t matter if you don’t own devices or use services, soon the whole of the environment itself will be one Intelligence Device.

Taan Maat

coupled with alphabet agency spreadsheet generators like facebook, the feedback loop they study and implement encodes us further into the Matrix every day. It doesn’t matter if you don’t own devices or use services, soon the whole of the environment itself will be one Intelligence Device.